The present invention relates to physical packaging position information processing systems and more particularly, to a physical packaging position information processing system which prepares physical packaging position information of units, for example, logical units in an exchange and gives a display of the physical packaging position information to a user or maintenance man.
In order that upon occurrence of a fault of a unit in the exchange, the faulty unit is to be exchanged in accordance with a result of diagnosis executed, packaging information of the unit must be stored in a system before the occurrence of the fault to permit the user to specify a physical position of the faulty unit. Conventionally, storage means for storing packaging information of units in a system, which have different shapes, are located at different positions and information specific to the system is prepared externally in advance so as to be inputted and stored in the storage means.
Further, a processing system is known in which in an electronic computer system provided with a diagnosis unit, package names of all packages in the system are stored in information storing means in correspondence to pieces of package type information and packaging positions of the packages, in respect of individual processing units constituting the system and in the event that a fault occurs, analysis of the fault is carried out and a package name of a specified faulty package is retrieved to correctly indicate the package name during the occurrence of the fault (JP-A-63-198135).
In the prior art system, however, the package system specific information such as information specific to the system and package names must be stored in the storing means, raising a problem that system specific information is required to be stored in respect of individual systems to be consigned and the productivity is degraded. Especially, in the field of exchange, a great number of exchanges are consigned and the number of kinds of units in an exchange is large, with the result that the number of physical packaging positions of units used in combination is drastically large. Accordingly, when the prior art electronic computer system is applied to the exchange, preparation of the system specific information and precedent selection and storage of the information in the system which are to be carried out in advance of the shipment of the exchange need very laborious work and the productivity of the exchange is degraded.
Since the system specific information in the exchange differs for each system, many kinds of system specific information per se are generated in the method of sorting the kinds of hardware in accordance with the system specific information.
On the other hand, system specific information conforming to actual physical packaging positions has not hitherto been prepared upon the installation of an exchange and upon the increase of units and as a result, the operability is degraded. Further, in the past, a physical packaging position of a faulty unit is not displayed and therefore, in the event of the occurrence of a fault, the maintenance man determines the physical packaging position of a faulty unit by looking up, for example, a construction drawing and looks for the position to actually find it out on the spot, thus degrading the maintainability.